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Yantas - A Pretty Amateur WIP

As I mentioned in my introduction, I've had basically no experience whatsoever with world-building, let alone map-making, with my last attempt at a conworld being undertaken over ten years ago when I was around 14 in a very basic form which as soon abandoned in favour of setting all my work on Earth. But here I am now embarking on something entirely new and different in my life as a conlanger.

Everything I'm about to post has been done almost solely in Paint but I did use GIMP to convert the images into spheres just to double check on a few things. The maps use a plate carree projection for the sake of simplicity in earlier drafts which was simply carried on into later stages.

My current attempt at creating a conworld is very bottom-up, starting at first with the positions of the tectonic plates, then their absolute movements and speeds, followed by their relative motions and from there working out which boundary types, e.g. convergent, transform, etc. would occur at a given plate boundary. Everything up to this point is shown in this map:

After this stage I developed the basic outline of the actual land-masses and finally gave them some names and a basic outline of their features:

The dark blue and blue-grey areas mark out the areas of the ocean greater than 500m below sea level while the light blue areas are the regions of water that lie above 500m below sea level. The green areas then mark basically all the major land masses on the continental plates above sea level with the dark brown lines indicating where mountain ranges resulting from current convergent boundaries would exist.

At this point the map is missing anything in the way of greater detail referring to the varying height of the continents, any indication of islands or island chains resulting from subduction zones. I did eventually add what I thought might be the more plausible island chains, as shown in the most up-to-date map below:

After adding the island chains I realised that the Eastern Ocean only covered the plate directly "east" of the Central Ocean while what was originally the southern Eastern Ocean and the Southern Sea could be grouped together to form a unified Southern Ocean, thus giving Yantas four oceans, i.e. Eastern, Western, Northern and Southern (which will be renamed once I have those words in the conlang I'm developing for these maps).

And that's where I'm up to so far. Probably not too impressive, but since I focus primarily on conlangs I have almost no experience with anything like Inkscape, GIMP or Photoshop (although I do have Inkscape and GIMP on my laptop). At the moment, however, I'm more worried about plausibility. I like the current look of Yantas, but having not studied anything to do with tectonic plates and boundaries since I finished GCSE geography in 2005, I'm a little rusty As a result, I'm looking for any criticism regarding how plausible this world is in its current stage of development, not so much how not so great the maps actually are because I know they're really not great.

Anyway, thanks to anyone who reads this and thanks again to anyone who might be able to help

EDIT: Oh, and as a rough guide, at the equator is about 25,600 miles (about 700 miles longer than Earth's)

I disagree that is very impressive actually. i never have the patience for it and just go in backwards.

I was looking at the Earths plates recently for my own map and noticed that most continents have very large sea shelfs on one side of the land (from which the are moving away, usually as much land as there is there will be at least that again underwater as part of the same shelf) and only the forward edge of the plate is actually close to land for the most part. I'd also suggest you give yourself more leeway on land forms starting with a fair amount of freedom whilst keeping the plates in mind, and then see what you have, and then transform that on tectonic principles, and then add pieces based on tectonic movement (like islands etc.). I'm sure you won't forget, but also remember volcanic formation of land which is always really cool.

I disagree that is very impressive actually. i never have the patience for it and just go in backwards.

Thanks very much for that

Originally Posted by Falconius

I was looking at the Earths plates recently for my own map and noticed that most continents have very large sea shelfs on one side of the land (from which the are moving away, usually as much land as there is there will be at least that again underwater as part of the same shelf) and only the forward edge of the plate is actually close to land for the most part.

I've recently started noticing that myself. Looking at this map:

... the Earth has basically two large, purely oceanic plates, the Pacific Plate and the Nazca Plate. The rest of the oceans are the result of a spreading sea floor associated with a large land-mass at the head-end of the plates movement, most noticeable with the two American plates and then Eurasia and Africa.

Originally Posted by Falconius

I'd also suggest you give yourself more leeway on land forms starting with a fair amount of freedom whilst keeping the plates in mind, and then see what you have, and then transform that on tectonic principles, and then add pieces based on tectonic movement (like islands etc.). I'm sure you won't forget, but also remember volcanic formation of land which is always really cool.

Looking at the map above, that doesn't seem like a bad idea. I could merge some of the oceanic plates with the continental ones, especially the ones I had originally conceived as just being something oceans happened to be on top of, such as the plate between western Arenda and eastern Hungas.

I could also change the direction of the Velkasta plate and merge it with the plate that covers what I'm currently calling the Southern Ocean (formerly the southern portion of the Eastern Ocean) and get basically the same results.

Well, I've taken some of Falconius' advice and, starting with the land masses that I derived from the initial tectonic plates, redrawn new tectonic plates based upon those land masses. Circular, I know, but it seems to have gone fairly well. Here's the current result:

I still have to work out things like island and mountain formation as the result of tectonic movement, as well as the relative motion of plates at boundaries, but I'm a bit happier with this layout than the older one and it gives me more leeway with my major land masses within plate boundaries, whereas before they were just wasn't enough room.

For example, with the Hungas and eastern Arenda plates now pulling away from each other, rather than bordering a purely oceanic plate, I now have room to work on adding larger islands and I can now work on more interesting, and more importantly inland mountain ranges in areas like Mistaya.

Anyway, a lot happier with this, but time to work out relative plate movements

It's a bit of a mess to be fair, but I'm only using this map very briefly to show how the position of mountain ranges and island chains was decided on to create a sense of realism about Yantas. After that it's all about adding greater and greater detail to the various regions of the planet.

So, here's the most up-to-date version of Yantas, including island chains, mountain ranges and the initial indications of altitude:

Thankfully, it's a lot less of a mess than the previous post, but from now on we can pretty much ignore that map for anything other than justifications regarding new features which might occur at, say, plate boundaries. I am planning on adding things like plateaus and mountain ranges resulting from previous geological activity, and eventually adding greater detail in regards to altitude (I mean 0 - 1500m covers almost the altitude range of Britain ) but this where I am at the moment.

I also have this larger map, but it's just a blown up map so things some of the mountain ranges and island chains are a bit clearer.

Oh, and I've decided to divide Arenda into two continents, with Arenda now referring the large mountain range running north to south and the area to the west of that while Konyur refers to the east-to-west orientated area to the east of this range, including the far-eastern mountain range and the area to the south of that.

Ok, so, as per advice of a user on the ZBB (and the CBB), under the username Salmoneus, I've tried to come up with a map of ocean currents on Yantas, before moving on to a climate map. I think this is more or less right, but there's an area east of Sirden that I have no frelling idea what to do with. Anyway, here it be:

What do people think? Is there something that could be improved or is the whole thing just plain wrong?

EDIT: I have just notices that one arrow, 30 degrees north of the equator and above 80-90 degrees east is facing the wrong way []

First off, it's neat to see this type of development on a map. Not to disparage some of the mapmakers on this forum, but often-times the land does not look very realistic in it's shape or form. This is because mapmakers may not be familiar with the types of Earth Science shown here. Being a freshman in high-school myself, I've only recently studied plate movement in-depth. While you have (for the most part) done a nice job with the placement of the mountains, I wanted to make sure all of the future additions to the map are placed correctly.

On a collision boundary between two land plates, there are mountains; the crust has nowhere to go but up.

On a collision boundary between two land plates, one ocean crust is pushed under the other. The rock and water trapped under plate #2 fuels the creation of magma. On this boundary you have cone volcanoes (active) and a trench (located where one plate goes under the other).

On a collision boundary between one land mass and one ocean, you'll find an off-shore trench and cone volcanoes.

Note that earthquakes (and, when underwater boundaries are involved, Tsunamis) will occur at many plate boundaries. An island chain is formed by the movement of a hot-spot (mantle plume) moving with the plate. Bigger islands are newer because they have not yet been subject to weathering.

You do not have good puzzel fit in your map. Where two plates are pulling apart, the land will divide. Look at South America and Africa on a real map; you see how they were likely once connected. Your continents where the plates pull apart might look like they fit together more.

I bet you know most of what I said, and in saying it I don't mean to offend you in any way. Just my suggestions; I took time to comment not because I want to criticize the map, but because I want to make sure it's the best it can be.

-FM

Last edited by foremost; 11-25-2013 at 06:13 PM.

The best maps are the ones we like the most after looking at the longest.

First off, it's neat to see this type of development on a map. Not to disparage some of the mapmakers on this forum, but often-times the land does not look very realistic in it's shape or form. This is because mapmakers may not be familiar with the types of Earth Science shown here. Being a freshman in high-school myself, I've only recently studied plate movement in-depth. While you have (for the most part) done a nice job with the placement of the mountains, I wanted to make sure all of the future additions to the map are placed correctly.

Thanks (although I'm not sure what a "freshman in high-school" actually is, lol. On of those lovely differences between the US and UK education systems )

I like to aim for at least some semblance of realism or, at the very least, plausibility in what I do. If that gives me some extra work to do, then great, hopefully I won't get bored

Originally Posted by foremost

Useful stuff and things I've cut down to make space

Definitely useful, and all things I've tried to take into account in my drafts so far (especially in regards to mountains, due to the effect they can have on climate)

Originally Posted by foremost

You do not have good puzzle fit in your map. Where two plates are pulling apart, the land will divide. Look at South America and Africa on a real map; you see how they were likely once connected. Your continents where the plates pull apart might look like they fit together more.

Yeah, that's something I'm still working on. Obviously to do that I'd have to back track the movement of the continents to see what their earlier neighbours would be in order to do a better job of it. As with South America and Africa it's most obvious at the moment in the western coast of Arenda and the eastern coasts of Hungas and Mistaya. Exactly how the other continents fit together, I don't know yet.

Saying that, looking at this map:

If you were to look at the globe today, it's surprising they managed to match up North America and Eurasia, but there you go

Originally Posted by foremost

I bet you know most of what I said, and in saying it I don't mean to offend you in any way. Just my suggestions; I took time to comment not because I want to criticize the map, but because I want to make sure it's the best it can be.

-FM

Nah, didn't think you were offending (didn't find it offensive ), but it's always good to get some constructive criticism